Nov. 26, 2009

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Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work on banning land mines, called President Barack Obama’s apparent decision this week not to join the Mine Ban Treaty “shameful.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy agreed. “It is not a rational decision,” he said.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it had completed its review of the treaty and decided against changing the U.S. position. “We made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday at a news conference.

Late Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Kelly was backtracking on the previous day’s statement, saying there had only been a partial review and that the administration is still looking at its overall policy. It was unclear how much hope that offered to those who support the treaty.

“This has all the appearances of backpedaling, with no guarantee of a different outcome,” Leahy spokesman David Carle said. “But one thing is certain: (Leahy’s) going to keep the pressure on, and for as long as it takes.”

Williams was gearing up for the Mine Ban Treaty Review Conference next week in Cartagena, Colombia, when she learned of the administration’s Tuesday statement that it would not join 156 other nations by signing onto the treaty.

“We cannot understand this shameful decision,” she said by e-mail Wednesday. She called it a “gaping contradiction in the supposedly ‘new’ politics of Obama.”

Leahy and Williams, a native Vermonter who remains a part-time resident, have fought for land mine bans for years and hoped that, unlike Presidents Clinton and Bush before him, Obama would be willing to sign the treaty.

When Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in October, Williams praised his efforts on nuclear weapons and said she hoped he would immediately announce plans to sign the land mine treaty.

Leahy said he, too, implored Obama to sign the treaty in a meeting earlier this year.

“It’s a lost opportunity for us to show leadership,” Leahy said by telephone from Washington on Wednesday. He noted that China and Russia, some of the larger countries that also had not signed the treaty, “aren’t the countries we want to be allied with.”

The treaty was created in 1997 and took effect in 1999. Countries that sign the treaty agree to stop manufacturing or using land mines and to destroy stockpiled anti-personnel mines within four years or clear minefields within 10 years. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines cites the treaty as helping to reduce the number of civilian deaths and injuries from land mines.

The U.S. already does not manufacture or use land mines, Leahy noted, so signing the treaty would pose no difficulty. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines lists only two countries as users of land mines — Burma and Russia.

The U.S. government has argued, however, that it needs to have land mines as an option in South Korea as a defense against North Korea.

President Bill Clinton had agreed during his administration that the United States should join the treaty in 2006 if alternatives to land mines were found. The Bush administration reversed that decision in 2004.

That the Obama administration’s decision was revealed in answer to a question at a State Department news conference rather than via a formal announcement didn’t sit well with Williams.

“I think Obama didn’t want to deal with this issue when he is in the midst of escalating his war in Afghanistan,” Williams said. “He didn’t want to irritate the military by changing land mine policy.”

The United States plans to send a representative to observe the Cartagena conference, the first time the country has had formal representation at a treaty conference. Williams said that if the United States is unwilling to sign onto the treaty, it shouldn’t bother to attend. “It would be better if they stayed in Washington if they are going to continue not being part of the solution of the global problem posed by anti-personnel land mines,” she said.